Clatskanie, Oregon—February 28, 2022: (A Message from the Clatskanie Farmers Market) Help us build the Clatskanie Food Hub! We’re asking for your generous support to help us raise $15,000 in start up capital by March 31st. We have secured a building and submitted our grant applications! Now we need to show grantors and private funders that we have a strong foundation of community support for this project! Every donor will receive a tax deductible receipt.
It’s not hard to imagine a space where everyone is welcome… the Food hub will be open year-round, four days a week with business hours for everyone’s schedule! It will be full of locally and regionally produced farm-fresh produce, meat, eggs, dairy, dry goods and tasty value-added foods! It will also have practical prices that reflect the hard work of those that grow and get our food to market. Plus, the Clatskanie Food Hub will be accessible for producers of all sizes through a Farm-Direct consignment model that maximizes margins for our vendors.
Furthermore, it will partner with programs like EBT/SNAP, Food Direct Nutritional Program, Women Infant Children, and Double Up Food Bucks, to ensure everyone has access to high value nutrition. For the community, the hub will offer family fun and learning through classes, movie nights, and interactive skill building! Finally, the hub will facilitate relationships with local food producers and organizations that represent the rapidly expanding regional food system!
Can’t you see?! Clatskanie’s locally focused food hub, sharing regional abundance and connecting Columbia County to something greater!
Your contributions will help cover:
- Cool storage build out
- Shelving & displays
- Chest freezers
- Technology to support sales & admin
- General building upgrades
We make magic happen when we work together!
Join the fun!
Private funders and grantors are excited about this potential, and want to support our project! First though, they want to see our commitment to carrying this vision through. This means a foundation of our own investment from both Clatskanie Farmers Market (CFM) and the amazing community that supports us (YOU)! CFM has already worked hard to secure fundamental resources like: a donated building downtown Clatskanie, reclaimed and refurbished materials for the space build-out, and much of the equipment required for operations. As a small non-profit, we have experience operating on a lean budget and have become experts at leveraging resources and maximizing the value of existing assets. Our board of directors is creative, talented, and connected to the many human resources in our community, illustrating our ability to make things happen even when money is in short supply. Now, we need your help to financially show investors and funders we’re committed! Here’s why you want to join in the fun:
CFM has been serving our community for nine years, and we’ve learned a lot about feeding people! Farming can be risky, but equally rewarding, so we want to build and diversify our producer base with the understanding that many pillars of support offer security in a shared load. We already have an amazing regional foundation to build on, plenty of untapped small-scale producers, and continue to incorporate burgeoning projects like our very own community garden and middle and highschool gardens. Clatskanie and Columbia County simply need infrastructure to capture and distribute this local and regional bounty!
Beyond our community, global markets for food, fertilizer, and distribution are becoming increasingly expensive and unstable, making it harder for large scale producers to meet their bottom line and move products to market. Investing in local infrastructure and regenerative agricultural practices that minimize input and maximize soil fertility will help ease our dependency on these global markets and recirculate the many forms of wealth associated with local enterprise.
Employment opportunities can be scarce in our county, hitting home the challenges for some to put food on the table and cover basic expenses. CFM is committed to demonstrating the many ways to share abundance outside of the pay-to-eat model of economy. We cherish our strong volunteer base that has supported us along, with the understanding that healthy food is a right for everyone and shouldn’t be limited to the dollars in our pockets. Now, we are looking to the future for agricultural jobs that pay well in more ways than just financially as a foundation for locally based butcher shops, canneries, fiber processors, retail outlets, food entrepreneur establishments, and our top industry in Columbia County, restaurants and dining.
Oh yeah, did we mention that food grown close to where you live, picked fresh when it’s most nutritious, and handled with love and care by your neighbors has been shown to not only improve your health and quality of life, but also remove the burdens that current agricultural and food systems place on our planet and its natural resources? That’s a win-win if you ask us! No other daily choice can have such a tremendous impact on improving life for our community and the communities we are all connected to.
Our growing regional food system!
Join some of the MANY friends working to connect local consumers with local producers like: North Coast Food Collaborative, Astoria Food Hub, North Coast Food Web, North Coast Commons, Food Roots, Food Hub Club, Turning Point, Oregon Food Bank, Farm to School, and countless farmers, distributors, and slow food activists!
Contact information: [email protected]